we have another great peripety.  It illustrates the obvious principle that, where the drama consists in a conflict between two persons or parties, the peripety is generally a double one—­the sudden collapse of Shylock’s case implying an equally sudden restoration of Antonio’s fortunes.  Perhaps the most striking peripety in Ibsen is Stockmann’s fall from jubilant self-confidence to defiant impotence in the third act of An Enemy of the People.  Thinking that he has the “compact majority” at his back, he assumes the Burgomaster’s insignia of office, and lords it over his incensed brother, only to learn, by blow on blow of disillusionment, that “the compact majority” has ratted, that he is to be deprived of his position and income, and that the commonest freedom of speech is to be denied him.  In A Doll’s House there are two peripeties:  Nora’s fall from elation to despair in the first scene with Krogstad, and the collapse of Helmer’s illusions in the last scene of all.

A good instance of the “great scene” which involves a marked peripety occurs in Sardou’s Dora, once famous in England under the title of Diplomacy.  The “scene of the three men” shows how Tekli, a Hungarian exile, calls upon his old friend Andre de Maurillac, on the day of Andre’s marriage, and congratulates him on having eluded the wiles of a dangerous adventuress, Dora de Rio-Zares, by whom he had once seemed to be attracted.  But it is precisely Dora whom Andre has married; and, learning this, Tekli tries to withdraw, or minimize, his imputation.  For a moment a duel seems imminent; but Andre’s friend, Favrolles, adjures him to keep his head; and the three men proceed to thrash the matter out as calmly as possible, with the result that, in the course of half-an-hour or so, it seems to be proved beyond all doubt that the woman Andre adores, and whom he has just married, is a treacherous spy, who sells to tyrannical foreign governments the lives of political exiles and the honour of the men who fall into her toils.  The crushing suspicion is ultimately disproved, by one of the tricks in which Sardou delighted; but that does not here concern us.  Artificial as are its causes and its consequences, the “scene of the three men,” while it lasts, holds us breathless and absorbed; and Andre’s fall from the pinnacle of happiness to the depth of misery, is a typical peripety.

Equally typical and infinitely more tragic is another postnuptial peripety—­the scene of the mutual confession of Angel Clare and Tess in Mr. Hardy’s great novel.  As it stands on the printed page, this scene is a superb piece of drama.  Its greatness has been obscured in the English theatre by the general unskilfulness of the dramatic version presented.  One magnificent scene does not make a play.  In America, on the other hand, the fine acting of Mrs. Fiske secured popularity for a version which was, perhaps, rather better than that which we saw in England.